OCC Webinar Series – Building a Brushing Strategy

October 21, 2019 – 7:00 pm EST

Over the past four years, I’ve been collaborating with Dr. John Newhook, currently Dean of Engineering at Dalhousie University, in several research projects related to brushing in curling. Between John and I we have measured over 600 athletes, John largely in Atlantic Canada and myself in Ontario. The vast majority of these athletes are competitive players in the U18, U21, and U25 age groups, but we have measured men’s and women’s competitive teams as well, from both Canada and from other countries. As a result, we have amassed a great quantity of normative data for various LTAD levels and are now in a good position to assess athletes quantitatively with respect to brushing performance.

In this talk, which I call “Building a Brushing Strategy”, I will explore the idea of building a brushing strategy for a team. The talk is largely targeted at U18/U21 coaches and athletes. We will look at brushing techniques, normative data, gender differences, energy pathways and fitness, and some additional ideas and tools that coaches can use to improve the brushing performance of their teams.